Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Ok some TE content at last. Heathkit IM-4100. This is a fairly basic universal-ish counter from the 1970s/80s. Tops out at 30MHz with 1Hz resolution. Can do frequency, event counting and event ratios (per). It is 5 digits so it can only show the MHz portion or the KHz portion of the frequency.

Why did I buy it? Well I had the nixie predecessor which was really fun to use, but annoying as hell to keep alive. This one is standard easy to get TTL top to bottom with no high voltages. It'll also quite happily run off 12V DC and has an input on the back for it. It's nothing clever but it's good

Arrived 100% untested with no plug. Did a quick inspection of the guts. Nothing particularly untoward was noticed other than some suspicious tants lurking in there. I'm sure they will explode one day but I'm not replacing them or the main filter cap yet. The build is actually really good - looks professionally assembled. Phew - no ham with Jesus' soldering iron has been at this one!



Next step was to bring it up on DC first with the PL320 in current limiting mode. Came up and consumed the expected 1.2 amps at 12V without any problems. No sign of any heating on any capacitors or runaway behaviour after 20 minutes so shoved the FG in the front of it and tested it. And it works fine!



Quick inspection of the mains side wiring and mains lead didn't identify any problems so chucked a plug on it and fired it up on its own power supply. Also no problems at all.



Job one done

[Saskia]

I'm mostly harmless ...

Where my mind went with that comment.....

you are exactly on my line of thought ...

[bd139]

Ok the Black Star 2010 was pretty easy. It basically just works, all ranges and controls. The calibration is good enough. The sine shaper could do with a little futzing but I'm not bothered about that.



And on to the next task...

[YurkshireLad]

When a seller on Amazon is selling a Rigol DS1054z for $82. And that's in Canadian. Ummm what? Not touching that with a trillion foot barge pole!

https://www.amazon.ca/Rigol-DS1054Z-4-channel-Digital-Oscilloscope/dp/B012938E76/

It has to be a weird product mix up.

I'll let you know I just ordered one   

Maybe Dave should buy one and make a video on it - "Dave's Dodgy Deal of the Day".

[Brumby]

Fired up my 1740A today to help track a signal.

While at the Jaycar warehouse clearance the other day, I came across a bunch of rechargeable party speakers.  A couple had fault notes indicating poor battery life, so it seemed logical that this might be a fault common to them.  So I got a couple ... well a few ... OK - it was a pallet.

Anyway, they have an Aux In and an Aux Out - so I was expecting to be able to daisy chain a couple of them - except it didn't seem to work.  The Aux In was easy enough to confirm as OK - so where was the Aux Out signal?

I hooked up the scope and set it to 20mV/Div as that was where I was starting to see a bit of noise.  For a signal, I tuned to an FM radio station then left these ticking over as I poked around.  Then I happened to make an adjustment - and I saw squiggly lines jumping around in sync with the music!!  It was the master volume control.

My expectation that an Aux Out would be at a fixed level was sadly wrong.

This does, however, provide for a point of convenience.  If you have all the downstream units set to full volume, you can control the volume of the entire setup from the volume of the first one.


Now to check out functionality of each feature for all of them ... and, yes, battery life on the three I've been playing with have been: poor (drops to half within 5 minutes), atrocious (lasts 3 seconds) and non-existent (dies as soon as mains power removed).  They are supposed to run 3-6 hours on the included 3AH battery.  I picked up a 7AH battery from the local Bunnings, so I might see how that goes after checking charging circuitry behaviour.


As an aside, Jaycar really should have been a bit more thorough in checking for documentation.  I have a couple of pieces of paper, one of which provides me with (what appears to be) the cost price of three of their products and another that gives me the name and phone number of a customer.  That last one is rather naughty.

[Vince]

Without pictures of all that you pretend... I have to assume it never happened !

[TERRA Operative]

Alright Vince, you called it...

I have a TDS794D on the way to me in the next few days... 

Cool ! 

Once you have done all your usual magic to it, I will trade it for this gem of mine.
A beautiful OEM Brother 9mm cassette, worth a fortune.

I am willing to let it go for a mere 500 Euros because it has slight wear and tear here and there, but is otherwise perfectly functional, all the bits are present, guaranteed.
I am even willing to give TEA members a special discount, 2% off. But I have only one available so first come first served, hurry up !

 

[capt bullshot]

Todays report from "Fun with TEA" dept:

While looking through my stash of outdated information technology equipment, I found this old Laptop in need of a battery charge. By chance, it was the one that could still run the PC software for the power meter I've developed in a former job. So I decided to charge the battery, but with proper use of TE to monitor and supervise the charging process:

This is the AC power source, together with some instruments to monitor current waveform, output power, voltage, current and frequency:



On needs to set the output voltage to proper 230V:



This is the redundant instrumentation - ye olde EWS 120 power meter and the Yokogawa power meter.

[ch_scr]

Ugh so my middle one wants a gaming PC. She has a T495 Ryzen 5 3500U pro laptop which isn't cutting the mustard now. Plus the constant fan noise is pissing me off 

Anyone care to comment on the following idea:

- Ryzen 5600G
- 16Gb corsair LPX 3200 RAM (2x 8Gb)
- 500Gb Samsung 870 Evo Plus
- Be quiet 600W supply
- Lian Li Liancool 205M
- have monitor, keyboard, mouse, MSI B550 board, be quiet cooler floating around already which can go in it. Oh and a ripped off win 10 pro license 

Will upgrade the GPU next year...

have several here. Contact me if you want. Also have GPUs to go along with those. From 1660ti to 3090 ...

would go for a 5600, not the G type, and an external GPU. Or the 3600x. The performance boost you are getting from 5600 imho does not make an upgrade mandatory.
As for RAM, all AMDs just love high speed memory. Would go for 3600, if not faster, CL as low as you can reasonably afford.
Have made good experience with Trident Z 3600 Cl16, but that was some time ago.
SSD: try to find a Samsung PM981. Least troublesome and fastest SSD I had found a while back. The thing to go for if you do not want PCIE4 with your SSD.
600W will be sufficient for 2070/2070 Super and below, 3060 and most likely 3060ti. The 3070ti I have here wants a 750W PSU ...
CPU TDP is about 120W - 140W depending on overclocking or not. (count in a reasonable margin, and I am factoring in the non-G version). I'd summarily add about 100W for the rest (mainboard, DVD if needed, RAM (if overclocked), fans, SSD, HDDs).
Which would give you about 250 W headroom for a GPU if you want to run the PSU in the most favorable load conditions.
250W would give you a 2060/2070/3050/3060/3060ti and a wee bit of headroom. Note: the 30 series GPUs have peak loads that make you shiver unless you undervolt them. A 3080 can easily go up to 500W spikes which would immediately shut down your PSU as the 12V rail could not handle it.

If you are planning to upgrade the GPU anyway and stick with AMD (which is perfectly fine), get a starter GPU which you can flip. Some older model like a 970 or 1060. And throw it out at a later point in time.

just my 2c

I'll agree on most points, but I'd get a "RX6400" low profile version. They won't be more expensive than what Saskia has suggested, but because it's the newest (and thereby the most powerfull) low profile gpu, I'd reckon it's resale value will be more stable. In a year or two, older gpu's will be a-plenty, value there will sag.

[bd139]

Quick pr0n post. Did an inspection of the 34401A. It's absolutely perfect.

All cal seals are present and confirms it probably hasn't been buggered around with:



Boring side inspection shows no rework done that is visible. Looks like it just came out of the factory!



Fun side with shields up



Removal of shield reveals the money shot..



Front end - no sign of abuse



Now being cleaned ...

[bd139]

Ugh so my middle one wants a gaming PC. She has a T495 Ryzen 5 3500U pro laptop which isn't cutting the mustard now. Plus the constant fan noise is pissing me off 

Anyone care to comment on the following idea:

- Ryzen 5600G
- 16Gb corsair LPX 3200 RAM (2x 8Gb)
- 500Gb Samsung 870 Evo Plus
- Be quiet 600W supply
- Lian Li Liancool 205M
- have monitor, keyboard, mouse, MSI B550 board, be quiet cooler floating around already which can go in it. Oh and a ripped off win 10 pro license 

Will upgrade the GPU next year...

have several here. Contact me if you want. Also have GPUs to go along with those. From 1660ti to 3090 ...

would go for a 5600, not the G type, and an external GPU. Or the 3600x. The performance boost you are getting from 5600 imho does not make an upgrade mandatory.
As for RAM, all AMDs just love high speed memory. Would go for 3600, if not faster, CL as low as you can reasonably afford.
Have made good experience with Trident Z 3600 Cl16, but that was some time ago.
SSD: try to find a Samsung PM981. Least troublesome and fastest SSD I had found a while back. The thing to go for if you do not want PCIE4 with your SSD.
600W will be sufficient for 2070/2070 Super and below, 3060 and most likely 3060ti. The 3070ti I have here wants a 750W PSU ...
CPU TDP is about 120W - 140W depending on overclocking or not. (count in a reasonable margin, and I am factoring in the non-G version). I'd summarily add about 100W for the rest (mainboard, DVD if needed, RAM (if overclocked), fans, SSD, HDDs).
Which would give you about 250 W headroom for a GPU if you want to run the PSU in the most favorable load conditions.
250W would give you a 2060/2070/3050/3060/3060ti and a wee bit of headroom. Note: the 30 series GPUs have peak loads that make you shiver unless you undervolt them. A 3080 can easily go up to 500W spikes which would immediately shut down your PSU as the 12V rail could not handle it.

If you are planning to upgrade the GPU anyway and stick with AMD (which is perfectly fine), get a starter GPU which you can flip. Some older model like a 970 or 1060. And throw it out at a later point in time.

just my 2c

I'll agree on most points, but I'd get a "RX6400" low profile version. They won't be more expensive than what Saskia has suggested, but because it's the newest (and thereby the most powerfull) low profile gpu, I'd reckon it's resale value will be more stable. In a year or two, older gpu's will be a-plenty, value there will sag.

Thanks both.

I am hoping that I don't have to stick a discrete GPU in it as the 5600G is probably good enough to run the games she wants at 1080p. That's the hedge I was playing with anyway.

Second hand prices here on CPUs and GPUs here are completely insane still which means you can basically sell them for £20 less than new price at the moment. Depreciation state means the financial model is that you rent a CPU for £1 a month with a £165 fully refundable deposit from the internet

[capt bullshot]

Quick pr0n post. Did an inspection of the 34401A. It's absolutely perfect.

Removal of shield reveals the money shot..



...

I vaguely remember the service manual stating: When removing and re-fitting the internal shield, check AC frequency response and calibration as moving the shields may have influence on the AC ranges.

[bd139]

I vaguely remember the service manual stating: When removing and re-fitting the internal shield, check AC frequency response and calibration as moving the shields may have influence on the AC ranges.

Highly likely. This is going to be sent off for cal soon so I'm not too bothered

[Brumby]

Without pictures of all that you pretend... I have to assume it never happened !

If you insist....

(Since this is "after the fact", I will have to excuse no shots of the scope - that setup has been packed away.  Sorry.)

 

Yes ... they have (changing) RGB LEDs    BUT ...

You can turn them off 



In all honesty, I have to declare the two boxes on the top are empty .... but I have a stack of 3 more next to my desk...  - so 12 units in all.  The 3 units I've checked so far have functioned - but I am short of the full complement of parts.  There is enough to make up 9 complete sets.  I have a 10th remote - but it was in the bottom of the box when the main unit was dropped on it.  It did not respond to my initial attempts at resuscitation and even if a resurrection was forthcoming, the case is a disaster.  I'll need 3 power supplies to make those units basically functional (without the UHF mic and remote) but they aren't too hard to come by.

It's a current product, too: https://www.jaycar.com.au/12-rechargeable-pa-speaker-with-wireless-microphone/p/CS2497

[mnementh]

bd on Discord asked for EMEX pics, well here's just one part way through setting up our stand with hendorog's help.
Finished, it will look very different and we'll do a further show and tell when it's all finished and functional.

Like our pissed off center sign ? ....well that's another story and I'll fill you all in later but hey, it does catch the eye. 

Ummm... I dunno aboot pissed off... but the guy in the hazard vest looks like he's doin' the "White-boy 2-step" and shuffling off to Buffalo... 

mnem
At least give him a microphone to hold up to his face so he doesn't look like a total deer in the headlights.

[mnementh]

That sounds like the cue for a "Yo mama so ugly that ..." joke.

I shall resist. This time.

Let me help you out: Denmark never diss-appoint.

"Yo mama's an Astronaut!"

"Yo mama so dense she absorb neutrinos!!!"    

mnem

[Brumby]

"Yo mama so dense she absorb neutrinos!!!"    

Yeeeowtch

[Neper]

Same with the blind trust in McKinsey or similar consultants. Those critters get off business school and apply the bullshit that gets force fed into their brains to actual businesses without ever having worked themselves ...

The first and thankfully last time I've seen them in action was in the late 80s at Germany's only nationwide radio station. The first 'problem' they found was that the studios used exclusively for a few hours of foreign language programmes on medium and shortwave in the evening weren't equipped for stereo.

[Kosmic]

No dice. Gave it a careful clean to remove what I took to be near microscopic flux spatter from the manufacturing process. No effect.

I can't find any obviously buggered passives, time to move on to active components. This thing is full of analogue switches, my next move is to probulate those to see if any are failed short/open, since if that happened on the range division circuitry at some point it could have this effect I think.

I'm curious as to what the glass capsule parts are in the protection circuit; they are not GDTs, you can see a solid slug inside them, and they are marked "VRxx", and have a (in circuit) resistance of ~190MΩ. There are also some curious smd things labelled "BDxx" that look like slugs of carbon, and measure like a ZoL, but those are usually a ceramic substrate with a "0", right? These look like smd caps made of carbon   

Some macro photos of those mysterious objects would help to identify them, I think. 

You can see the glass capsule components easily enough in the pic I posted; they are just under the first and last PTCs. There's one of the mysterious "BDxx" carbon slugs on the bottom left of the pic, just under the shield contact spring.

Those glass capsules, could it be that they are some kind of spark gaps?

I assume, GDT means in some way "spark gap" 

Yes, sorry, Gas Discharge Tube.



And we thought TE boat anchors are bulky!   

And the follow up video

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XGL3rskcQD0

It's working ! 

[bd139]

LOL that’s bloody hilarious. He properly owned the critics 

Edit: ffs rabbit hole opened there. Now looking at how much it'd cost to build an Elektor Formant, something I couldn't afford as a kid but really wanted 

[mnementh]

Ugh so my middle one wants a gaming PC. She has a T495 Ryzen 5 3500U pro laptop which isn't cutting the mustard now. Plus the constant fan noise is pissing me off 

Anyone care to comment on the following idea:

- Ryzen 5600G
- 16Gb corsair LPX 3200 RAM (2x 8Gb)
- 500Gb Samsung 870 Evo Plus
- Be quiet 600W supply
- Lian Li Liancool 205M
- have monitor, keyboard, mouse, MSI B550 board, be quiet cooler floating around already which can go in it. Oh and a ripped off win 10 pro license 

Will upgrade the GPU next year...

have several here. Contact me if you want. Also have GPUs to go along with those. From 1660ti to 3090 ...

would go for a 5600, not the G type, and an external GPU. Or the 3600x. The performance boost you are getting from 5600 imho does not make an upgrade mandatory.
As for RAM, all AMDs just love high speed memory. Would go for 3600, if not faster, CL as low as you can reasonably afford.
Have made good experience with Trident Z 3600 Cl16, but that was some time ago.
SSD: try to find a Samsung PM981. Least troublesome and fastest SSD I had found a while back. The thing to go for if you do not want PCIE4 with your SSD.
600W will be sufficient for 2070/2070 Super and below, 3060 and most likely 3060ti. The 3070ti I have here wants a 750W PSU ...
CPU TDP is about 120W - 140W depending on overclocking or not. (count in a reasonable margin, and I am factoring in the non-G version). I'd summarily add about 100W for the rest (mainboard, DVD if needed, RAM (if overclocked), fans, SSD, HDDs).
Which would give you about 250 W headroom for a GPU if you want to run the PSU in the most favorable load conditions.
250W would give you a 2060/2070/3050/3060/3060ti and a wee bit of headroom. Note: the 30 series GPUs have peak loads that make you shiver unless you undervolt them. A 3080 can easily go up to 500W spikes which would immediately shut down your PSU as the 12V rail could not handle it.

If you are planning to upgrade the GPU anyway and stick with AMD (which is perfectly fine), get a starter GPU which you can flip. Some older model like a 970 or 1060. And throw it out at a later point in time.

just my 2c

If you're planning to do actual A-title gaming and planning the upgrade to a 30xx, I'd go a wee bit more overhead on the PSU, myself. All the 30xx GPUs will spike huge under fast framerate rendering, especially using oversampling or ray-tracing which is finally getting some love from the game devs. If he's going to stream any of his gameplay, this adds even more load; which these GPUs will gladly eat like candy, but they will suck the juice.

If you have any dreams of running anything like MS Flight Sim, I would be going at least 800W if not  1KW - Between AMD's Auto-OC and NVidia's various gaming profiles...  with most of the A-titles nowadays, during gameplay you can be OC-ing BOTH CPU and GPU by 20% or more for several seconds at a a time using relatively tame factory profile presets.

In short... IMO, Saskia's being too kind with the PSU pain pill. 600W is just... barely there for a "my generation" build. It would be running hard even on my 2080Super based system. If you already have the 600W PSU  and are going to use a low-end GPU until you upgrade to a 30xx, I'd plan on upgrading the PSU at the same time.

Agreed on 5600/5600X vs 5600G; pay the extra money and skip the 5600G. The 5600G is known for a lot of issues with "out of the box" compatibility even on B550 MBs.

AMD/Ryzen had problems before with the bootstrapping conundrum; where a MB needed to be flashed to support newer CPUs, but couldn't until booted on an older CPU: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pa-105

It is my understanding that the 5600G/B550 combination continues this fine tradition, and unless you have one of the MBs that can upgrade the BIOS without a CPU installed, you get to play this particular game of whack-a-mole.



But the big problem with 5600G is that you won't have PCIe4.0 available on any general purpose slots, and you may not even have PCIe4.0 speeds to the NVMe and GPU slot depending on the combination of 5600G and MB/chipset. I know you probably don't care about the GP PCIe3.0 slots, as B550 MB already, but no PCIe4 speeds to the GPU slot is a big deal.

I also agree on maxing out speed over qty for RAM... except that now, the "standard build" for A-title gaming uses DDR4-4400, and entry-level is DDR4-4000. This matters with gaming, as all the "Auto-OC" built into the BIOS uses the XMP profiles associated with these speed ratings to configure the OC speed profiles which are most commonly used for gaming.

So unless you or your son feel like spending days manually configuring those memory OC profiles by trial and error, do yourself a favor and shop the faster DDR4 speeds, even if the latency looks like crap.

16GB is still enough for all A-titles unless you're jumping to 2K/4K video (2K/1440P will be a wee bit cramped; not going to do oversampling with 16GB), and most of the MSI 550 boards are quad-slot, so I'd go with the fastest 16GB kit I can afford at least DDR4-4000, then plan on bumping up with another kit in the future. If you can afford more on RAM now, substitute 32GB and upgrade to 64GB in the future.

SSD... Until you're ready to bump up to a X570 MB where you know all your GPU/NVMe slots are PCIe4.0, the real limiting factor is the Phison E12 controller and PCIe3.0. Improvements in read/write speeds on any PCIe3 NVMe SSDs are going to be incremental at best. You've seen the difference between PCIe3 and PCIe4 on your current gonad-crusher MacBook. 

Since you already have the B550, I'd say go with any established-brand Phison E12-based NVMe drive... but unless you can find one you know is pre-COVID manufacture, I'd look out and research carefully on ALL the current EVO SSDs, as SamSuck has been doing "undocumented revisions" on their parts/specs due to component shortages (specifically the 870/970Plus you mentioned, plus others):

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-is-swapping-ssd-parts-too 

Alternately, since this is supposedly going to be a gaming rig and not the daily driver/main PC for essential day-to-day (I always recommend this be the case with your gaming rig for security reasons), you could just shop your best deal on 2 "decent" NVMe drives and put them in RAID 0, as long as you don't mind using SLEEP mode. If you or your son are one of those "gotta boot it cold every time" people, RAID 0 adds 15-30 seconds every startup as the BIOS reassesses the RAID every. fucking. boot. 

   This setup is still error-free after 3 years. 

That post was a monster.

These points are my opinion as a gamer PC builder, and I may have misremembered something or be completely wrong on another. 

mnem
As always, take anything I say with a grain of salt big enuf to pickle a dwagon. YMMV, IANAL, DQMOT, WTFBBQ, DILLIGAF...?

[YurkshireLad]

800W power supply?! 

[Ice-Tea]

Schlumberger / Enertec 4002 on the bench. Works , but looks a bit "off" to my eye. Now on to the task of figuring out if my understanding of SA operation is off, the unit is poor but witin spec or something is indeed not OK.

EDIT: I think ebay allows Youtube videos these days. Might be a good candidate to make use of that. Film the whole whackadoodle and let prospective buyers figure it out.

[mnementh]

800W power supply?! 

Some configs the manufacturers recommend 1KW to compensate for surge current demands.

I have been using a 1KW PSU on both my gaming rigs since 2019. Boy's modest Ryzen 5/RX580 rig has my old 650W Corsair PSU. 

I don't like pushing a PSU to its limits; it creates extra heat in the box which (unless you have one of the latest cases with a PSU tunnel at the bottom which isolates the PSU airflow from the rest of the PC) is then sucked up by the CPU/GPU coolers, reducing their cooling efficiency. I much prefer to have my PSU loafing along at 50% or less most of the time, so that when it does have to handle high surge, it's still running cool.

But today's 30xx GPUs suck more juice than anything I've ever owned; and then you have to add overhead for the CPU, which now also auto-overclocks on any modern PC.

mnem
*juicy*

[tggzzz]

Schlumberger / Enertec 4002 on the bench. Works , but looks a bit "off" to my eye. Now on to the task of figuring out if my understanding of SA operation is off, the unit is poor but witin spec or something is indeed not OK.

Reduce the span and see if that improves the peak's location. There are surprising tolerances on the frequency accuracy of SAs, related to the span.

Or simply use a frequency counter!